Stockholm; Cyclist City; first impressions.

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Stockholm was one of the four capital cities I visited last month on my Eastern European Baltic Tour. Having never visited before, it was a trip of first impressions, taking in the culture; something I love.

Landscape and arrival

For me often the most exciting part of landing in a country is looking out the window; primarily to take my mind off the potential ear popping, but to get a first glimpse. In Sweden's case, it was literally green. It may sound a silly description, but despite landing in a rural area of Sweden, I've never landed in a place surrounded by so many trees. We continued our voyage on the ferry in the evening, and saw the best sunset I've seen to date and were literally followed by constant greenery. Every now and then we'd pass a rare dock, or a few posh houses, but otherwise it was just us and the Swedish shrubbery.

Swedish city life; 'the hairy bikers'

We arrived in Stockholm on a Saturday, meaning the city was pretty busy. We knew straight away we were in a relatively expensive city, the long streets were home to some famous brands, completely out of price range for our student budgets.

I quite like remembering a place by certain, unique and memorable aspects. For Stockholm, that has to be its mass amount of cyclists and hairdressers. Every corner, every side-street, a bike or hairdresser would be there. Perhaps we don't notice what we have back home living there constantly, but I'm pretty sure Stockholm is hairdresser central.

I quite like the idea of bikes, it's a shame really that Britain is so hilly or avoiding delusion; we're quite lazy. It just seems a really good way to function, people were happily cycling about the place and it created a really cultured, and almost jolly environment to be in (if you weren't bumped into).

In hindsight, after visiting Helsinki later in the week, the Stockholm cyclists were actually really friendly and we didn't have too many nearly run over incidents. The Finnish bikers on the other hand are ones to look out for!

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Photos

Stockholm Sunset
Stockholm Sunset

Stockholm; Cyclist City.
Sweden; Cyclist City.

Green Sweden
Green Sweden

Swedish hair-care
Swedish Hairdressers